Hugh has loved music since he had his first Mickey Mouse record player. He then graduated to a GE swing out speakers stereo player. At 16 Hugh worked at Hoyt’s High Fidelity in his hometown of Jacksonville, Florida.

He also got his Silverstone Sears guitar and as a birthday present received a Gibson that he wished he still owned!

He became involved with Conrad Cowart who promoted concerts at the Jacksonville Friday Musicale featuring groups like Little Brown Egg and Mouse The Boys & Brass. While attending Bolles School he became friends as a classmate with the legendary Gram Parsons, who became the first inductee of the Southern Music HOF.

When he went to Santa Fe Junior College in Gainesville, Florida he tried his hand at DJaying at a radio station but he had the shortest DJ career in history of THREE WEEKS before returning to work in a record store and later radio news at WGGG where he spent time with Jimi Hendrix and James Brown.

In the early 80s he met the legendary Manuel Maloof, founder of Atlanta’s Maloof Tavern, who introduced him to the genres of Southern Music. That led to close to 40 years of searching through the South with his original co-founder Ron Rich for a location.

It was while in Macon, Georgia that he met the director of the Georgia Music HOF and learned that physical HOFs were soon to be dinosaurs and this individual proofed to be right as later the Georgia Music HOF closed down.

The future was to be online HOFs and that is why Hugh and Ron created the first site now followed by this one.

When he moved his public relations consulting business to Hotlanta, Hugh became involved with the Atlanta jazz scene with former Florida State University friend and top jazz flutist Stephanie Petis. He booked Jerome Olds into the KRAZZ Disco.

A Jacksonville, Florida native, Michael Rothschild began his music career by promoting local bands while in high school at the Bolles School.  At Tulane University, New Orleans, in the mid-1960’s, he headed up concert promotions for the school and booked private parties with some of the city’s signature artists, including Irma Thomas, Art & Aaron Neville, Dave Bartholomew, and Ernie K-Doe.

After graduating from Tulane with a BA degree in History, Rothschild was commissioned a 2^nd Lieutenant in the U.S. Army.  He served as a convoy officer at Ft. Ord, CA and Cam Ranh Bay, South Vietnam.  Honorably discharged in 1969, Rothschild became a buyer in the Boston office of Transcontinental Music Corporation, an entertainment conglomerate, which operated nationwide rack jobbing and distribution warehouses.  In 1970 he transferred to the company’s New York office where he became Business Manager of the music publication, CIRCUS Magazine, a subsidiary of TMC.

While based in New York, Rothschild co-produced a comedy motion picture spoof on the sexual revolution, IS THERE SEX AFTER DEATH?, which starred Buck Henry, Robert Downey, and Alan Abel.  The film received rave reviews and became a cult favorite at the box office and later on home video.  Based on the movie’s success, Rothschild was able to acquire other films and in 1973, he formed a partnership in Atlanta, GA to distribute them nationally.  The company, Omni Pictures Corporation, handled a wide variety of independently made domestic and foreign movies, including Mel Brooks’ THE TWELVE CHAIRS.

In 1980, Rothschild produced his first record album thanks to a longtime friendship with Atlanta’s Col. Bruce Hampton.  The result, OUTSIDE LOOKING OUT, by Hampton and his band, The Late Bronze Age, became the initial release on newly formed Landslide Records in 1981.   Rothschild built a staff, set up national distribution and added to the Landslide catalog with eclectic artists such as reed virtuoso Paul McCandless, Atlanta’s popular new wave group, The Brains, and Curlew, a group featuring renowned bassist, Bill Laswell.  Landslide also distributed albums by a rising young New York band called 10,000 Maniacs plus Athens, GA acts on the DB Records label, that included Pylon, Love Tractor, and Guadalcanal Diary.

By 1983, Landslide Records had begun to focus more on Southern roots related music with the signing of the popular regional blues outfit, Tinsley Ellis and The Heartfixers.  The label released three albums with The Heartfixers, including the critically acclaimed TORE UP featuring the legendary R&B shouter, Nappy Brown.  At that time, Rothschild and Ellis established a long-term publishing partnership, which remains productive and includes the platinum selling song, “A Quitter Never Wins,” recorded by Ellis, Jonny Lang, John Mayall, among others.  Additionally, Rothschild served as Executive Producer on several of Ellis’s solo projects for Alligator Records, including FIRE IT UP, produced by the legendary Tom Dowd.  Along with The Heartfixers,  Landslide produced and released two modern blues records by The Bluesbusters, led by Little Feat’s Paul Barrere with Catfish Hodge and featuring ex Bonnie Raitt bassist Freebo and keyboardist T Lavitz.

During the 1980’s Landslide was instrumental in launching the recording careers of two notable acts:  Webb Wilder and the Beatnecks, whose IT CAME FROM NASHVILLE album remains a treasured Americana item, and Widespread Panic, which released its first recording, SPACE WRANGLER, through the company.  Additionally, Landslide handled the initial self titled album by The Derek Trucks Band, also from Jacksonville.

In 1990, Rothschild joined up with Michael Parver Associates, a firm specializing in the marketing of motion pictures, primarily for major film studio clients, whose roster included Paramount Pictures, Walt Disney Studios, and Warner Bros.  Along with his duties as the agency’s media director, he reinforced the Landslide roster by signing strong regional roots-oriented artists, which in addition to The Derek Trucks Band, included blues guitar phenom Sean Costello, with whom he produced three critically acclaimed albums, rockabilly’s Cigar Store Indians, and jam band, Sound Tribe Sector Nine.  The label also distributed the well-reviewed NEW ORLEANS BIG BEAT by the influential New Orleans bandleader and songwriter, Dave Bartholomew.

Rothschild retired from motion picture marketing in 2005 to devote full time to the label, which in 2021 celebrated its 40^th anniversary. Landslide renewed its relationship with Webb Wilder and issued a special “full grown” CD edition of its classic debut followed by Webb’s first new album in several years, ABOUT TIME.   Additionally, Rothschild produced Coastline, the hard working Carolina rock and soul band, for their label debut, SWEET ‘N’ RIPE, and a followup CD, SNEAKIN’ OUT BACK, which won several “Cammys” at the 2007 Carolina Beach Music Association Awards, including Best Album.

Landslide releases also include ex BR549 leader Gary Bennett’s HUMAN CONDITION, FACES from the popular bluegrass hybrid band Blueground Undergrass, Virginia folk singer/songwriter Jan Smith’s 29 DANCES, ALLIGATOR LOVE CRY and SIDEWALK CAESARS by Scrapomatic, featuring Mike Mattison,  TOUGH IT OUT!, a live concert DVD/CD combo package by Webb Wilder, two compilations by the late blues artist Sean Costello, SEAN’S BLUES and AT HIS BEST – LIVE, a live album from the legendary bluesman Piano Red called THE LOST ATLANTA TAPES, and in 2012 the newest offering from Scrapomatic, I’M A STRANGER (AND I LOVE THE NIGHT), and three productions from the roots, double slide guitar blues band, Delta Moon.  More recent releases are NIGHT WITHOUT LOVE by Webb Wilder, AFTERGLOW from Mike Mattison, ALAFIA MOON by Tampa based blues rocker Damon Fowler, and in 2021 a  double CD 40^th Anniversary Tribute album featuring many of the recording artists who have appeared on the label.

Rothschild resides in Fernandina Beach, FL, is married and has a 42-year-old daughter, Annie, and three grandchildren, Asa, 6, Ione, 5, and Del, 3.